Page 38 of Thomas
Thomas had held steadfast to his anger toward her. He was still angry, but his heart quivered at her blatant distress and tears.
“I’msorry,” she sobbed quietly into the sheets. “I am so sorry, Thomas. We—I didn’t know where you were for the longest time. You’d disappeared and I couldn’t sense your aura. I don’t know why. Maybe because you were too weakened? Or too far beneath the castle? It wasn’t until two months into it thatHudson finally confided in me and told me where you were—what had been done to you.”
She lifted her head, watching him with her messy, tear-stained face. “He was so distraught, he needed to talk to someone. But neither of us knew what to do! He was afraid and so was I. If Lord Blakeley was willing to do such a vile thing to his eldest child—his own flesh and blood—what more would he do to a servant? It took Hudson another month to convince Lord Blakeley to stop the torture, but we were—Iwas a coward. I should have helped you and I’m sorry. I will regret it for the rest of my life.”
Thomas closed his eyes and a single tear spilled from the corner and across the bridge of his nose.
In the storybooks he’d read as a child, someone had always come to the rescue when another person was in trouble. A cherished friend or family member. A lover. The protagonist never experienced devastating hardship because someone always came for them at just the right moment. Just before terror struck and scarred them irreparably.
No one had come for Thomas. He’d been terrorized and scarred for three whole months, and he didn’t think there was any coming back from that. What happened when no savior arrived? How did the story carry on?
“Please keep trying,” Mira said hoarsely, breaking the stream of his forlorn inner thoughts. “Will you try to drink the blood, Thomas? Justtry. You haven’t touched anything since lunchtime yesterday.”
Maybe this was how the story continued? Just trying. He wanted to give up, because he was tired of feeling wretched. Tired of remembering what he used to be and the life he used to expect for himself. A vampire he would never be again and a life he might not ever realistically have.
His gaze shifted to the bouquet of tulips sitting near his head, lovely, ethereal and soft in the golden light like a beacon of… he didn’t know what. He breathed in, and the faintest scent teased his senses. Sweet and peppery.
Thomas made an effort to push the duvet down, and Mira quickly stood. She pulled it until the material was far enough down that Thomas’s pajama-clad legs were free. He allowed her to help him upright because his body felt weak and his head was swimming.
Am I hallucinating?Tulips shouldn’t smell like Lord Ashford. They exuded the typical earthiness of freshly cut flowers, but it was as if a subtle, gingery aura were invisibly wrapped around them. It was wonderful.
“Can we go to the table?” Mira asked, standing in front of him when he was upright and with his legs over the side of the bed.
Thomas nodded. “Yes. Okay.”
She held him steady as he stood, then wrapped her arm around his waist to support him to the table. If Thomas had been in Mira’s position—a first-gen servant working in a cruel purebred lord’s house, without any power and bound by the strict rules governing society at large—would he have savedherfrom such an ordeal? Would he have had the conviction and bold selflessness that he so expected from her?
As he sat in the tufted chair, the question made him uncomfortable. Was it fair for him to hold her accountable for what had happened? Probably not. But it had fed his rage in a morbidly satisfying way. That by hating and ignoring her, he might give her just an infinitesimal speck of the suffering he’d experienced.
“Can we try the blood first?” she asked, bringing it to the forefront of the tray and making it easier for him to reach. The mere sight made Thomas’s gag reflex lurch in a dry heave. He swallowed it down and took a breath.
“Give me a minute,” he said shakily. He glanced over his shoulder and back at the beautiful flowers. “Where did these come from?”
Mira took the seat beside him. “Lord Ashford. He had an appointment in town this morning and brought them back for you.”
If he carried them, maybe that’s why?Thomas took another breath and closed his eyes, letting the heat from the indirect sunlight warm his face. Mira had sat him in the chair that was obscured from the sun.
“Lord Ashford is very… cautious, about the circumstances in which we’ve come here,” she went on, speculating. “But it is clear to everyone that he sincerely cares for you. Sulee thinks he has a crush on you, but he doesn’t know how to wrestle with the truth of it. That the experience is completely foreign to him.”
Thomas opened his eyes. “Sulee? The head chef?”
Mira nodded. “She’s been so nice and helpful since we’ve arrived—everyone has. But Sulee is… wonderful.”
He huffed a soft laugh. He didn’t need to ask any further questions to understand the sentiment behind that statement. It sounded as if Mira was adjusting to their new environment exceptionally well.
“How… do you feel about Lord Ashford?” she asked.
Thomas didn’t hesitate. “I might have a crush on him, too.”
I want to bite him, he thought ruefully. Cameron always smelled magnificent. When Thomas thought of Cameron sitting across from him with his sturdy and broad frame hunched in sincere concentration over the chess board, his flawless brown skin practically aglow and golden from the firelight, it made Thomas hungry in a way that didn’t simultaneously trigger the nausea.
It was a pure and instinctive hunger from deep within the core of his nature. A feeling he recognized well but was activelyignoring because of Lord Ashford’s personal convictions. He wouldn’t dare to selfishly challenge the line of Cameron’s boundaries. One Devon in Cameron’s life was more than enough.
“I thought you might like him,” Mira said, tilting her head. “You’re often attracted to other bookish types.”
Thomas scoffed, amused. “Am I?”
“You are. Dawn was an intellectual and quiet, bookish type. Lord Ashford is the same, except much larger and male. I think…” She paused, contemplating. “If you want something from Lord Ashford, you should ask him directly. Sulee said she thinks Lord Ashford is embarrassed by his lack of experience—that he thinks he’s too old to bother with such things because he’s spent all of his youth focused on running the estate and raising Lady Rachelle. But if someone was patient enough to… to guide and reassure him…”
